Part 1 of a two-part essay: WHAT and HOW. First, a brief history of Prospect
books, its birth and what it did up to 1993. Part 2, to follow, will be about
how the operation was carried out.

Readers will already be aware that the book publication part of Prospect
Books passed into the hands of Tom Jaine in June of last year, just over 12
years after the publication of our first book. I feel a certain impulse to say
something about the history of those 12 1/2 years and to put on record some
of our experiences.

Prospect Books was born when PPC was born, and the twin birth was a
haphazard affair. One could have demonstrated by logical argument the
desirability of creating some sort of journal on food history; but what
precipitated the birth was not a rational discussion but a freakish
conjunction of circumstances.

Let me first sketch in the background. In 1975 my wife (hereafter Jane) and
I returned to London from Laos, simultaneously shedding our past diplomatic career (we needed only a day or so to wriggle out of that carapace)
and preparing to be writers instead - indeed two partly written books were
in our baggage when we landed at Heathrow. At that time it was still
seafood, seafood, seafood for me and translating Alexandre Dumas� Grand
Dictionnnaire de Cuisine for Jane. A kindly warning given to us that activities of this sort were unlikely to bring more than slight financial rewards
proved to be true. Jane Grigson, who gave the warning, also provided a
partial remedy. She helped tide us over by propelling me into the arms of
Time/Life Books, whose huge 'Good Cook' series of 30 or more volumes
was just starting, with Richard Olney as mastermind. I was embraced as a
'consultant', first on seafood and then on just about everything else.

It was brilliant of Time/Life to have Richard set the stamp of his creative
mind on the series (and to have his artist's hands photographed in volume
after volume as he did the hands-on work in their kitchen). But they didn't
want him to go (as we would now say) over the top; so they ensured that
there was a counterweight, in the form of the massive bureaucracy at their
headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, and the equally massive rule book
which they had compiled for the project. In requiring slavish conformity to
these rules they drove Richard, not infrequently, to a state of enraged
frustration. This frustration was especially acute over the rule that no recipe
could be reproduced in the books unless it had first been published
elsewhere. It emerged almost at the outset that there were certain recipes
which, as Richard saw it and as any sensible person would agree, just had to
be in, but which could not be found in a satisfactory form in any existing
publication.

When we visited him one day and heard him enveighing against this petty
rule and describing its dire consequences, a solution mysteriously took
shape, like a piece of ectoplasm, over the lunch table. It seemed that
Richard could only be rescued from his impasse by the creation of a new
journal to serve as the vehicle for rapid publication of a few recipes which
could then be transferred to Good Cook volumes.

The shape and substance of the new journal was then largely determined
by the views which Elizabeth David had already formed about what the
world needed in this particular field of endeavour. We were all willing
listeners. We were as enthusiastic as she was for helping the Royal National
Lifeboat Institution. So the first issue of the journal was to benefit that good
cause. I and Jane, backed by Elizabeth and Richard and Jill Norman and our
family, were to be its editors and publishers. And it all happened, swiftly
and successfully; and Richard had his recipe sources available in time; see
the second and last items in the extract below from the Table of Contents.

Elizabeth David, Hunt the Ice Cream --- 8

Nathan D'Aulnay, Aubergine Gratin --- 14

Sheila Thompson, Leaves from a Lowland Scots Recipe Book --- 15

Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz, Coriander --- 18

Caroline Cookson, The Technology of Cooking in the British Isles,
1600 to 1950 - Part I: Before the Use of Gas --- 23

Jeremiah Tower, Pear and Watercress Soup --- 42

Elizabeth David, A True Gentlewoman�s Delight --- 43

Maria Kaneva-Johnson, In Praise of Simplicity --- 54

Tante Ursule, Crayfish a la Bordelaise --- 60

Click here.

Click here to see PPC table of contents pages starting with PPC volume 1. Also order back issues here.